The Space Left by His Absence
by RubyWings91
Summary: Set during Double Dipper. Stan leaves the party in the tourist shop to find Old Man McGucket wandering around the house, behaving more oddly than usual. Spoilers for anyone who hasn't watched the series up through Season 2 episode 12.


Disclaimer: Gravity Falls does not belong to me. It was created by Alex Hirsch.

Warning: if you haven't seen the series up to Season Two, Episode 12: A Tale of Two Stans, there will be spoilers.

This Story takes place during Double Dipper

 **The Spaces Left by His Absence**

Stanley Pines, currently known by the rest of the world as Stanford Pines, watched the party below from the in house balcony.

It was good when things came together like this. Everyone enjoying themselves and Stan was going to come out with a fair amount of money from it, too. He'd actually have enough cash almost twice over for the work he was planning for the portal for the next couple weeks.. God, the bribes to keep the bills looking normal in the records were horrible. Still, if the government caught wind of any signs for what was really going on here…well, he'd taken all the precautions he could and for the last thirty years, they'd been enough.

And, as an added bonus, kids would be talking about this party for some time. It was a good night all around.

Pacifica and Mabel were having their sing-off, and his niece clearly outperformed the town snob by a mile. 'That's my girl,' he thought with a smile.

He glanced across the room and through the window to see Dipper sitting under the porch light in the booth outside. He'd almost prefer to find that the kid had snuck off. The poor boy needed to learn it was okay to break the rules every now and again, despite the consequences later. Oh well, the summer was still young. There was still plenty of time for him to learn that along with how to stand up for himself.

Suddenly, as if in answer to his thoughts, Stan saw whispering into Soos's ear at the DJ stand none other than Dipper. Huh. Now wasn't that odd? He glanced out the window again to see who he had originally thought was the boy standing there and realized it must be a child of similar build wearing a hat like the one he'd picked out. After all, he could only see the back of the kid's head from here.

The elderly man wondered if his great nephew had made a new friend he had yet to meet or bribed the kid with some of the money in the box. Either way, it was a step in the right direction of standing up for him. Perhaps a little sneakier than Stan would prefer but there was something to be said for that too if experiences from his decade on the run were anything to go by. He smiled at the thought that maybe there was hope for the youngster after all.

Soos straightened up and announced into the microphone, "Dudes, would the owner of a silver and red dirt bike please report outside? It is being stolen right now."

Stan chuckled as the guy hanging off of Wendy rushed first to the window and then out the door. He had no doubt that Dipper had something to do with that, too. And of course, the little goober took full advantage of the opportunity to join the teenager he so obviously had a crush on.

Then the music slowed down and rather than simply ask Wendy to dance with him, Dipper freaked out. Stanley rolled his eyes, amazed how the boy went from reminding him of himself as a child one moment and Stanford the next. Even Mabel's attempt to calm the boy seemed to have little effect. Was that actually a list he was pulling out of his pocket? Seriously? His great nephew really was just like Poindexter dealing with his first crush. Stanley was surprised the kid didn't trip over the damn thing as he ran from the room.

As Stanley left the balcony and went back down the hallway, he saw Dipper dart into the attic and slam the door shut. As he walked closer, the kid started talking to himself, although his words were muffled. He was tempted to go in and talk to the boy but decided against it.

Instead, Stanley went down stairs. There, he heard a noise coming from deeper within his home and decided to check it out, suspecting some partygoer had lost their way. The people around here were so clueless that they could get lost anywhere.

When Stan rounded the hallway, his suspicions were confirmed as he saw Old Man McGucket standing in the doorway of his room. The old con artist sighed in annoyance. How'd he even get back here? He braced himself for a particularly difficult few minutes, as the man could be one of the most persistent of the clueless town folk. "Hey McGucket," Stanley called "The party is in the tourist shop, not back here. Did you even pay to get in?" He doubted the old man could afford his charge, to be honest.

McGucket turned and looked at him with a big smile on his face. At least, Stan thought he was looking at him, it was hard to tell, the way his eyes tilted away from each other so much.

"Pay? Why would I need to do a thing like that? I'm just shim shamin' back to my room." He gestured to Stanley's room as he said this. "Where's my spittoon at? I swear it was right here."

The crazy old man was having an episode of some sort, great. "No, why would it be? That's my room. This is my house, remember."

"Is it?" Fiddleford asked, confused. "I could have sworn it belonged to someone else. Huh…" The old man trailed off, looking lost for a moment. In the silence, the activity from the tourist shop made dance floor was so loud it sounded almost like the footsteps were coming from right above their heads, rather than the other room. "No, I guess you're right," then he cocked his head and said, "but your hands look wrong."

Stanley stiffened at the statement, "What did you say?"

The old man shrugged and said, "I don't recall. Sometimes, I don't know half the confounded things I say." Then he looked around, "Where am I, anyway?"

"You're in my house," Stan was still a little shell-shocked from the comment about his hands.

"So I am." He stated, looking around and said, "Well, I ought to be going now. And don't try to talk me into staying. I've made up my mind, Stanford."

"I wasn't going to," Stanley stated, unsure if he was relieved or unnerved by the way McGucket was using the name he'd gone by for the last thirty years.

He turned back to Stan's room and said, "I just need my ray gun first so I can… so I…you know, I don't remember what I need it for, actually. It must something mighty important, I reckon. Oh well," The old man stood there for a moment looking around in his usual dazed way then, the look morphed into mild confusion and, finally, outright fear. "Why did I come back?" he whined, looking like he'd go into a full panic in a moment. "I shouldn't have. We shouldn't have done it, Stanford. We shouldn't…." With that, he opened Stanley's door and rushed in on all fours, acting more like a startled rabbit than an old man.

"Hey!" Stanley called out, rushing in after the man, equal parts concerned for the old man and annoyed at him. "Get out of there." He entered just in time to see McGucket slip under his bed. He pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration and took a deep breath before carefully approaching it. As he knelt down next to his bed, he could see a pair of scared eyes staring out from beneath. "McGucket, you need to come out."

McGucket looked into his eyes and at his hands before asking, "Did you steal that face?"

That, combined with the earlier comment about his hands, caused something to click in his mind. This room had been full of diagrams and notes about the portal when he'd moved in. He'd seen the F and assumed it meant Ford, but now he recalled that this crazy old coot with a hand for technology and he his first name was Fiddleford. Coincidence? At this point, he doubted it. "McGucket, how long have you lived in Gravity Falls?"

"At least thirty years, I remember the big hullabaloo when you opened your shack. Before that… before that, I was… I don't..."

"Hey, steady there." Stanley said, seeing the man fidgeting nervously beneath the bed. "How about you come out from under there and we can talk out here."

McGucket slowly crawled out from under the bed, pausing and glancing around a couple times, as if watching for some unseen danger. Finally, he stood up beside the bed and said, "Sometimes I almost remember and I'll say things that I don't understand. Especially around here."

Stan suddenly cursed his luck for the party, as it meant that he couldn't risk opening the secret entrance to the lab. Sometime after the kids went back at the end of the summer, he vowed to try showing the man a few things from there or perhaps the first Journal to see if he could jog some memories he now suspected were up in that muddled head.

As if having picked up on his thoughts, McGucket looked at him and said, "I won't go down there again. The thing on the other side…" he shivered, "is it just me or is it cold in here?"

Stan froze, these words once again stuck too close to home. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, I know why I came back!" The other man said, taking his hat off of his head and spinning the brim nervously in his hands. "I wanted to take something apart. It was…it was… something that just… aww donkey spittle, it's gone again." The usually chipper man now looked small and frail as he stood there, whimpering as he clutched his hat in his hands. Still, the comment about his hands, the mention of the basement and talk of 'the other side,' were all a little too on the nose for his taste.

"C'mon McGucket, let's go back to the gift shop."

"Just as long as we don't have to take the elevator."

"Okay, that's it. What do you know about the portal?" Stan asked in a mix of fury and fear grabbing the other man by the shirt. Hearing mention of the elevator on top of everything else, it was just too much.

"What's that? I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't play dumb with me, McGucket! Your comment about my hands, something about the elevator, and the other side?" He could barely bring himself to mention the hand thing, it hurt so much. "I've spent the last thirty years of my life trying to get this thing up and running." I've been trying to rescue my brother; he almost said but couldn't spit out the words any more than he could stop his eyes watering up at the painful memories that came with the thought. "In all that time I've never said one word about any of this to anyone. Now spill! What do you know about it?" His voice cracked as he spoke the last sentence.

There was a spark of something, some deep understanding and a look of sympathy, before it got buried, clouded, stolen. What remained was a clueless old man. "I don't recall. My memory goes dark around then. I can't remember. I can't, I can't, I won't, I can't, I…." the man looking legitimately scared. And why wouldn't he be, with Stanley the way he was at the moment? He was shaking so badly that Stanley suspected the guy would have collapsed if he wasn't holding him up.

Stan knew what a liar looked like and he could see that the man wasn't one. Wasn't there something about him being found in town around the time he'd first showed up? He released man's shirt and said, "Sorry."

"So am I." McGucket stated, looking down at his feet sadly as he shuffled out of the room. Stanley wondered if he was sorry for not having his memory or for something else he couldn't recall. Something to do with his Stan's twin brother. And probably with the weirdness that ruled Gravity Falls, too.

As McGucket scurried away like an opossum fleeing Lazy Susan's broom, Stan leaned against a wall, struggling not to cry. Finally, he got control of his emotions. He sighed and asked, not for the first time, "Just what happened here before you called me Stanford?" Unlike the others times he'd wondered just that, this time he was sure he'd encountered someone who had the some of the answers or at least did once upon a time, before this place had gotten to him somehow...and that it was the weirdness of Gravity Falls that had reduced him to this state, Stanley had no doubt.

Realizing he had found someone who clearly should have had answers to a great many of his questions but didn't hurt so much. He'd spent three decades getting basically nowhere. To this day, he never could figure out how to operate the portal Stanford was sucked through. All attempts to find his brothers other journals had turned up nothing. Now this…it was too much.

A few minutes later, Stanley went back to the main room, hoping mingling at the party would cheer him up. He sighed as he saw McGucket. The man sat on a chair in the back corner, hugging his hat to his chest as he stared down at his bandaged bare feet, looking like he was near tears.

Stanley went over to the snack table he'd set up earlier that evening, loaded up a plate with treats and poured a cup of Pitt Cola before he went back to sit in the chair next to the one Fiddleford now occupied. The old hillbilly glanced at him cautiously before looking back down at his feet, looking both the sanest and the saddest that Stan had ever seen him.

Stanley offered the food and drink to the other man, who perked up at the offering and accepted it willingly. As he began to pick at the food on the plate, Stanley said, "I'd like to apologize about the way I acted back there," He said. "I had no right to do that."

"It's fine. I reckon I should be used to it by now. Most people act like that around me. Adults try to ignore me, teenagers pull pranks on me in the yard and kids run in fear at the sound of my voice. Even my own son has a spray bottle he uses on me from time to time." He set the plate aside and sighed.

Stanley shook his head and said, "That doesn't make it right."

Fiddleford shrugged and stared down at the pile of food, "When I come 'round here or see you around town, I can almost remember. More so, with those kids here, especially the boy." He nodded toward the small figure making a dash across the far side of the room, who looked like he was on a mission of some sort.

Stanley smiled and said, quietly enough that no one else could hear, "He reminds me of my twin brother." He paused for a moment before adding, "And it terrifies me because the stuff he's so curious about can be dangerous."

Fiddleford nodded in agreement, "Yeah, it most certainly can be," he then scratched his head and added, "Although I can't think of any specific examples at the moment." Then after a few seconds of silence, he asked, "How did I even know you were a twin before you said it?"

Stanley shrugged and said, "I probably mentioned it before at some point." He knew he hadn't, which meant Stanford must have said something before. That meant that his brother had thought about him sometimes and that he'd told this man, so he must have been a close friend. He smiled a little at those thoughts.

McGucket nodded at his explanation and they just sat a silence filled by the absence of a person that Stanley was now sure they had both been close to at one point in their lives. "Take care of yourself, McGucket," he finally said.

"You too, Stanford. Is it Stanford? Sorry, sometimes I have trouble remembering that's your name for some reason."

"That's fine." And for this man it was. Somewhere, on some level, Fiddleford McGucket knew the truth. He was now sure of it. "Good night."

The other man smiled back at him and picked up his plate again.

It was the first time in thirty years that Stan been able to drop the ruse for a moment and be Stanley Pines, talking to one of Stanford's friends, even if he couldn't remember. Even if McGucket couldn't really be of help, he also couldn't really do any harm in his current state. Stanley felt a little less alone than he had earlier that evening. Even if his coconspirator was the local coot who wasn't even aware of the knowledge dancing just at the edge of his reach.

The smile lingered as he went back to the snack counter and began piling a plate up for himself. Back to the illusion he had built to disguise himself while he worked to rescue his brother. When he looked up to see a dollar bill on a fishing hook he said, "Right, like I'm going to fall for that one." 'Then again,' he thought as he glanced back at it, 'this might be a nice distraction. I could really use it…'

In Double Dipper, we see Pacifica Northwest win the competition with Mabel for the Party Crown by bribing Old Man McGucket, who was sleeping in the back of the room, to clap. I didn't think anything of it when I watched the scene the first time, but when watching after learning his history I got a little story idea. Since we don't see much of him, I wondered if he had been wandering the house for a while. Could it trigger memories? What if Stan found him during such an episode? The questions just kept rolling and the idea eventually evolved into this.


End file.
